


the places we're afraid to go

by crownedcarl



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q, Bond, and all the things unsaid that still ache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the places we're afraid to go

**Author's Note:**

> The premise here is, loosely – Bond can't let go. Vesper is a physical hurt, or like Siken puts it “you are a fever I am learning to live with”. Nobody will convince me that he didn't love her, or that he doesn't still.

They sleep together. It has never been anything more than that.

Bond has his flat and Q has his. The line between their work and private life and this thing they have together is clear – neither is to interfere with any aspect of the others.

It's a simple enough arrangement. Q's flat has the bigger bed, so that's where they go. Bond sometimes stays the night and sleeps uneasily. Sometimes, an arm or a leg gets slung over Q's slighter frame (but he only guesses from the heat and pins and needles when he wakes up and Bond has left the bed already) and sometimes, they have breakfast together.

Mostly, they don't.

It doesn't warrant much thought. The first time they have sex, it's in the dark and Q's eyes are tightly shut. The briefest flash of pain slices through him and he clenches his jaw with a grimace, teeth biting into his lip. These are the things he remembers most vividly.

There are hands, warm and steady, like desire itself searing into his skin. He doesn't remember this.

-

It doesn't change anything at work. Q is still the Quartermaster and Bond his agent. It disturbs him, occasionally, how easily he refers to Bond as some sort of property; like a blade that is going dull and needs sharpening, endless rounds of it that simply wear him down to the core. Bond goes to foreign countries and men drop like flies in his wake, Q's voice in his ear giving orders and instructions; there are suggestions that border on threats when Bond acts out.

It's a lot like satisfaction and more like remorse when Bond carries out an order without second thought.

This has never been what Q wanted for him.

-

They fuck, to put it simply.

-

Q wakes up on a Thursday morning and stares at the ceiling.

He blinks. The ceiling is still there.

Someone is making coffee and singing. It takes him a moment to recognize it as Bond – of course it's Bond, who else, he stayed the night. Disappointment is unwarranted, but Q feels it anyway.

He gets out of bed without a fuss, padding into the kitchen in a shirt and underwear, expecting something to fall into place.

“Morning,” Bond says.

Q accepts the cup of coffee he is offered.

-

From then on, he takes note of the details.

-

Once, he asks Bond why he has trouble sleeping.

Bond thinks about it before he turns on his side and closes his eyes.

“There was a woman,” he says and then quiets down. He won't say more.

Q suspects that he can guess how this story ends.

(Because inexplicably, he knows. There was a woman and then there wasn't.)

-

Sometimes, Bond doesn't have nightmares. Sometimes, Q thinks he even spots a smile on his face when he's asleep.

He doesn't bring it up. There's no reason to pry. If Bond is dreaming about past lovers, he can't control it and despite their understanding, it's none of Q's business.

Still. It slips out when the TV is on low and London is blanketed in darkness. The question breaks the easy silence between them and Q cannot pretend that he doesn't notice how Bond stiffens.

He doesn't wait for a reply. He switches to the weather channel and lets the silence speak for itself.

-

“What's your favourite drink?” Bond implores. He has ordered himself a glass scotch and waits patiently for Q to answer.

Q contemplates it, tapping his fingers against the smooth surface of the bar. It is an easy enough question but he feels as if perhaps there's more at stake here than Bond judging his choice in alcohol. Finally, he says “I'd have to go with the vesper Martini."

Bond goes silent.

-

Once in a while, Q contemplates pulling Bond's files. Not his medical records (the scars speak for themselves) or the lists of friends and lovers stamped with DECEASED in bold font, but mission files. Maybe they would give him an idea of why mentioning certain things to Bond is like a trigger being pulled.

Occasionally, he tries to put the pieces together. The woman that once was, the way Bond sometimes sleeps with his jaw locked tight, the strange longing when he goes to sunny countries with sailboats in the oceans. Maybe they all fit, he muses. The various scattered parts of James Bond, buried but never forgotten, dead, yet lingering.

He never pulls the files.

-

“Drowning,” Q remarks. The sky looks like it's weeping, leaving the very air damp. “What an awful way to die, don't you think?” The flat overlooks a river; Q has wondered what it might feel like to have water in his lungs in the moments before death. He has wondered about it enough that it is a morbid but familiar thought.

The way Bond stiffens beside him is incentive enough to never mention it again.

-

Q isn't one for kisses. He places his teeth at Bond's neck and bites a vicious mark into the skin that he hopes will reach down to places unknown. There is a hand in his hair and sweat slicking the places where their bodies touch, nails scraping down skin.

He bites harder and fucks deeper because the need is like a bruise that never fades and the look in Bond's eyes that tells Q that he is not here, not really - that look makes Q's limbs tremble where they bracket Bond's.

He hurts him. It's undoubtedly consensual, but he hurts Bond. He won't name all the ways that he does. Maybe he reopens old wounds, but Bond is hardly sentimental. What's under the surface is what composes the surface, too – regret and guilt fashioned into determination and carelessness, charm as old and tried as Bond himself.

He doesn't stay the night, but then Q has never been surprised by that.

-

They're in bed together, but they might as well be on different planes of existence. The distance of miles is condensed into the mere inches between their bodies. Q's eyes have adjusted to the dark. Bond's are shut.

Q thinks about speaking, voice soft and coercing and accusatory. You never let me in, maybe, something sad to guilt Bond into talking.

He recognizes that the places Bond keeps his secret are too raw to visit. Time hasn't healed any metaphorical wounds; were they real, he imagines they would only fester.

He says “How long will you be gone?” because Bond has missions to complete and the safe road is the easiest one, after all.

-

Bond doesn't ever return unscathed. If a job well done is not marked by shallow scrapes and flesh wounds, it's bruises and cuts, or the meat of one shoulder torn by a bullet or slashed by a knife. He spends three days in Montenegro and comes back with broken fingers and a split lip, blood crusted around his nostrils and matted into his hair.

He takes a shower at MI6 and goes back to his flat where nothing is waiting but a bottle (if not several) of whiskey.

If he were a braver man, Q would have the determination to follow.

-

He wonders. Of course he wonders. His curiosity nearly gets the better of him, because what files could possibly be so secretive that M had made a point of telling Q that she is the only one with access to them?

Intrigue, fascination, apprehension. He has every opportunity to access them. His eyes hurt from staring at the screen. One soft click of his finger on the keys could tell him everything.

Bond makes a rustle behind him, tailored suit not hiding the sleep deprivation and exhaustion. Q busies his fingers elsewhere.

-

It's not just fucking, anymore.

-

"Do you think people do it on purpose?" Q asks, absently tracing a finger across the condensation on the window. Bond doesn't spare him a glance, but inclines his head from his perch on the couch.

"I mean - do you think sometimes people get so lonely because they cling to something that isn't there anymore? It's like masochism, don't you think? Holding on to a memory and expecting it to measure up to whatever is left that's real. Do you think some people are just incapable of accepting that anyone cares, because they think they deserve the emptiness?"

His heart is beating faster than its usual steady rhythm. It's an inquiry masked in curiosity, a naivete that is forged from the ability to lie.

"I wouldn't know," Bond replies. 

-

"Who was she?" Q finally asks.

Bond meets the question with stony silence.

"Did she have dark hair?" Q continues. His fingers clench around his mug.

Bond doesn't quite slump, but it's as if all the air goes out of him, leaving his body a shell that is searing to the touch, burning itself out from the inside.

"Just another woman," Bond says. "It hardly matters. She died."

Was she the only one? Q thinks, but he decides to keep that question to himself.

-

After a while, Q stops asking. It doesn't matter if Bond's thoughts are with someone else. Q has his body, and that - that's something he can put his hands on and know is real.

He has never been one for sentiment.

-

Q finds him in the showers at MI6, in the end. The water isn't running anymore and Bond's clothes are clinging to him. Blood stains his hands, still warm.

This is no time for hesitation. Q's steps echo on the tiles as he moves towards Bond.

He grasps Bond's wrists gently and levels him with a gaze that isn't accusatory.

“You're shaking,” Q says. Fine tremors move down Bond's arms and travel to the join of skin against skin. It has Q trembling, too.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and it's a silly thing to say. “Is it the blood?”

Bond nods and it's a jerky thing. He looks at Q and there is a darkness to his gaze that Q is simultaneously afraid of and intrigued by.

(He thinks that maybe this has to do with the woman. He dismisses this thought. It is none of his business.)

The blood drips to the floor at irregular intervals. Bond trembles and Q closes his own fingers over Bond's. The blood is on both their hands, now.

“It's alright,” he murmurs and then his lips are on split knuckles that taste like copper when he swipes his tongue along the skin. The trembling intensifies and then stops.

He spends minutes like that, cold, in the darkness, tasting a dead woman's blood. When he looks up, it is to an expression that speaks of absolution.

“See?” he asks, and the darkness is a comfort. “There's no blood left.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've obviously taken some liberties with this. I know that Bond invented/named the vesper Martini, but for the sake of this fic, we're pretending it didn't go down like that, alright? Now, for some other things.
> 
> I wrote this because I refuse to believe that Vesper isn't only a mere sore spot, but this constant, relentless heartache. And like a friend of mine put it (paraphrasing): “he's not even over Skyfall, how is he meant to be over her?” And as a bonus, this lovely description of Bond that gets to me every time: “he seems so lonely sometimes, in this bone-deep marrow-trembling kind of way”.
> 
> Some parts, as you may be able to tell, are less my style than the others. I usually focus on a narrative that is less introspective than a lot of my previous work, but some parts here just come off as...off, to me. Hopefully, it doesn't detract from the story itself.
> 
> I hope this didn't come across as dark as it felt when I was writing it. I know I alluded very strongly at the end to the Casino Royale scene, but that's the way I wanted it.


End file.
